Web services often help create compatibility and interoperability among various packaged and customized web applications in a standardized and vendor-neutral manner. Web services may be economical and beneficial when used in an enterprise-level business scenario that combines the functionality of multiple applications into easy-to-use enterprise services. Such a business scenario may require a services-oriented architectural approach. Enterprise services may expose the functionality and data of applications so that they can be accessed by any service user.
Often, these web services may be referenced in a Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) repository. To locate a desired web service, the user determines or guesses particular taxonomies or ontologies used by the web service and the potential values for such taxonomies. For example, version 1 of UDDI supported three built-in standard taxonomies: the NAICS taxonomy of industry codes; the UN/SPSC taxonomy of products & services; and a geographical taxonomy of location codes based on ISO 3166, while version 2 implemented an external validation taxonomy. More generally, taxonomies and ontologies may help capture syntax and semantics of the particular web service. Without these restrictions or requirements, results from the query may be incomplete or fail to include the desired web service.